This Economist piece on the world being on the verge of a geothermal energy breakthrough has simply intensified my hatred of the "solar revolution" going on in poor countries.

Rant 🧵
When I was growing up in Nigeria, at no point did we own a landline. We were simply not rich enough to get one. The entire country peaked at under 100,000 land lines - only the very rich and well connected could obtain one.

This problem where poor countries simply cannot do anything that involves the last mile of delivery shows up everywhere and is one of the biggest differences with rich countries

A lot of ink on Kemi Badenoch and Nigeria this week. If I may be so presumptuous to think I have something to add to the 'debate', here goes 🧵 The first thing to say is that there are millions of Nigerians in Nigeria and outside Nigeria who HATE Nigeria. HATE in bold, uppercase, underline, red font. They have a deep and visceral dislike for the country

This is fascinating indictment as it unwittingly gives an insight into what a lot of the Nigerian ‘elite’ got up to during the (ongoing) currency crisis that started after oil prices crashed in 2014 and Buhari got elected in 2015. Short 🧵

https://twitter.com/ndganews/status/1844732635215515947

The indictment comes at it from the point of view of Onyema using the US banking system to commit fraud. And that’s all fine and true. But what was happening on the Nigerian side of the ledger was even more interesting

This guy is too stupid to be the richest man in Nigeria or even Africa.

https://twitter.com/olufemiawoyemi/status/1815215818868715632

Really promised myself never to comment on him or his stupid business anymore to avoid brain damage to myself. But his stupidity is just everywhere and hard to avoid

Another day, another one. And trust me, he’s not just ‘changing the straps’ #TheWatchesofSanwo

https://twitter.com/DoubleEph/status/1677983330854223872

Yesterday the Adamawa governor, completely unprovoked, posted a video of him enjoying his holiday abroad (now deleted). I will say Nigeria is probably going through one of its toughest economic crises since the 90s right now

Buhari was a useless president, that is not in doubt. But as someone who lives outside Nigeria, one of the worst things about his presidency has how he made Nigeria completely irrelevant outside of Nigeria. A big country no one cares about This last election really brought it home to me. Barely any coverage, no one cared at all. Had it not been for Obi who added a dimension of interest, I shudder to think how much worse it would have been.

[
Bola Tinubu - The Optimistic Case 🕊️
] 1. He is not Buhari - Simplistic as this sounds, there is at least 1% economic growth available just because the person in Aso Rock is not Buhari - a congenitally mentally lazy fellow who put in at most 1.5yrs of actual work in his 8yrs in office

[
Bola Tinubu - The Pessimistic Case 🦇
] 1. Obviously his age and health. He is in reality around 80 and visibly mentally diminished. This body, ravaged by time and self inflicted wounds, is now about to collide with the pressures of the Nigerian presidency. His body will not win.

Throwback to this goodie from 4 years ago - Tinubu accurately predicting the 2023 presidential election results (1/2) 2/2

Good thread. The guys at @StearsBusiness are my day ones and they do a great job of cutting to the meat of the Nigerian economy here (if you can call it that)

https://twitter.com/oduneweniyi/status/1552235177228865541

What is particularly depressing is not that Nigeria is about to collapse - “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation”. Problem is that Nigeria can actually continue like this for a very very long time. Non-existent growth, govt unable to do anything other than pay salaries etc

Was going to do another observation on Turkey *looking* richer than its GDP per capita suggests. But on further reflection, $8,500 is pretty rich if you exclude a few rich country ‘outliers’ Growing up in Nigeria, there was a clear and unmistakable distinction between what I call dollar roads and local currency roads. In Turkey, whatever difference between those two types of roads is zero to negligible

I've seen enough. Bola Tinubu has won the APC presidential ticket and he's now at least 51% of the way to becoming Nigeria's next president (alarming).

My thoughts on why/how he won. You don't have to get angry or argue - it's my opinion.

🧵

https://twitter.com/thecableng/status/1534488933261791232

1. Endorsement Mirage - This is with the benefit of hindsight but if any candidate knew he was never going to be endorsed by Buhari, it was Tinubu. Since the endorsement never came for anyone, we can conclude it was a benefit to Tinubu in the end.

One of the craziest things about Nigerian politics (some might say exciting) is unknowable it is. Getting a full picture is practically impossible even for insiders. You can never piece everything together Just as a practical example - today in APC, say 30% of the horse trading and negotiations will be conducted entirely in Yoruba. Another 40%, say, will be conducted in Hausa language. None of them documented.

Been reading everything I can find on Wagner and I had not realised they made a propganda movie set in Central African Republic. Full movie is on YouTube but preview here And this fascinating FT piece on the movie [ft.com/content/11ac95…]

This is incredible. I’ll come back to it once I’ve picked my jaw off the floor premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines… There’s the fairly standard type of corruption - inflated contracts, collecting a bribe to award a contract or awarding contracts to your cronies. Nothing new about all of this and a country can even progress with them

Everyone talking about how tech startups in Nigeria should have better government relations in the face of the current regulatory onslaught are really not addressing the issues which make operating in Nigeria a major disadvantage In how many countries will the central bank hire a former attorney general to go after a 2yr old startup that is doing a couple of million dollars in revenues and is probably not yet profitable? Why should a company like that have to worry about govt relations?

I want to rant about football. No, not the beautiful game we all watch on TV. Something else I find increasingly disturbing as my kids get older. I wonder if the way the sport is structured is worsening whatever racial/class divides we have in this country. Someone’s probably done some research on this but I’m too lazy to find it so I’ll just use anecdotes. Both my boys played in tournaments this weekend (loads of them now over the summer). Now we are getting text messages about signing up to some premier league clubs’ academies

“In 2018 he [Xi Jinping] talked again about the Soviet party’s collapse, noting that, with just 2m members, it had defeated Hitler, but with 20m it had lost power. “Why? Because its ideals and beliefs had evaporated.” economist.com/special-report… This special report on the CCP's centenary is really good. I'll say Xi Jinping is currently the most focused/determined/energetic major world leader. Even after a decade in office, his energy does not appear to be dimming. Some interesting excerpts...

This is very good by @mrianleslie. In particular, the paragraph that teases out the generational differences between the report’s authors and today’s activists ianleslie.substack.com/p/elite-wars I’ll add that the report’s recommendations will be fairly popular with ethnic minorities themselves and if the govt implements some of them seriously, they will make a dent in some of the actual problems that prompted the commission in the first place

My lukewarm take on the government’s race report is that cultural pessimism is probably underrated the discourse around disparate outcomes among ethnic minorities. The disparities highlighted between black Caribbean and black Africans really makes me wonder - I know it’s true now but what happens with my kids? And their kids? Britain is not a racist country (don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise, I’m not interested) but....

I think this will end like a situation where you ban the sale of alcohol and then armed robbery goes up because the new robbers were previously never sober enough to go out and rob people

https://twitter.com/cenbank/status/1357760892163735553

Unlike out here where crypto is mostly a fascination or a bit of fun for most people, in Nigeria it is a very real and increasingly important part of trade. People who trade with China use it to get around fx scarcity and restrictions